


Persuasion

by squid (triesquid)



Series: he has no art [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Major Sheppard, Musician Rodney McKay, Older Sister Jeannie, Pre-Slash, Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 06:15:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triesquid/pseuds/squid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An Ancient Instrument plus a Rodney that believes himself to be artless.  Probably not the best combination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Persuasion

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for: Stargate—"48 Hours" and "Redemption" Parts 1 and 2...potentially. Just the usual there, but not-there of the Atlantis-verse.
> 
> Inspired, long ago, by ["The Beauty of You"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/161096) in [Moments of Sacred and Profane](http://archiveofourown.org/series/6414). Of course, there is another fic that inspired this too, but for the life of me, I can't remember which one it is; I can, however, see the scene from it in my head, so that's nice I guess. *is frustrated*
> 
> Set during season 1, so the Major is intentional. Also, this was originally written before we had any idea about Jeannie other than her existence, so this is not canon-compliant in that way. There's also been some minor editing since [I originally posted it over on _Wraithbait_](http://wraithbait.com/viewstory.php?sid=4501).
> 
> Thanks to my beta-bug, whee71.

> _I am bending_  
>  _Made of steel_  
>  _I am stumbling_  
>  _Towards something real_  
>  _How can you forget this feeling_  
>  _Of standing straight while the world is reeling?_  
>   
>  _Don't leave me here alone_  
>  _You're as close as it gets to home_  
>   
>  _Don't look down_  
>  _You might fall_  
>  _Life made rookies of us all_  
>  _In our finest year_  
>  _Don't wait up_  
>  _We'll be fine_  
>  _Somehow we might get it right_  
>  _In our finest year_  
>   
>  _I am hopeful_  
>  _Full of doubt_  
>  _And I am trying to work this whole thing out_  
>  _So how can you just sit there sleeping_  
>  _When your world's on fire_  
>  _And your chest is beating?_  
>   
>  _And I want to think you feel the same..._  
>   
>  —"Our Finest Year", Better Than Ezra

* * *

"Come on, Rodney," John said bumping his shoulder. "Give it a try."  
  
"I would rather not, Major." Rodney continued to study the scanner in his hands, moving around a large Ancient device that looked remarkably like the love child of a harpsichord and a glass pipe-organ.  
  
John stepped up behind Rodney to breath in his ear. "I can touch it for you. Turn it on." John felt Rodney stiffen. "I know that you play. Try it. See if it fits."  
  
Rodney moved away from John, leaving a space that screamed from the loss of warmth. "I don't know what you're talking about—"  
  
"That you play.  The piano.  Nine years of lessons—which, wow, how did you reach the piano, let alone play when you were three—"  
  
Rodney spun around, nearly knocking John and himself to the floor. "How did you find out about that?"  
  
John shrugged and leaned against the wall casually—or as casually as he could with the look of utter horror on Rodney's face. "It was in your file." The file had also noted that Rodney had abruptly stopped  _after_  he had been removed from his sister's care and returned to his parents.  
  
Rodney's face became a blank mask—an unsettling lack of expression on a face that usually gave so  _much_  away. "I don't play anymore, Major. I  _haven't_  played in a very long time."  
  
John bounced a bit. Just a little.

Rodney hadn't said _wouldn't_ , just _don't_ and _haven't_. The semantic difference was slight, but it was there. Rodney turned back to finish his readings of the instrument, and John let the subject rest.  
  
For now.  
  


* * *

A week passed and little had been accomplished with the device. It was initialized. John had done that himself that first day. Rodney had sent down one of the anthropologists who had a specialization in ethnomusicology to work on it.

That's when things had taken a turn for the worse.  
  
It wouldn't react to her.  
  
Rodney sent down an ATA-gene carrier to assist her.  
  
It only made one very cranky, discordant sound and then refused to do anything else.  
  
Rodney asked John to help her, despite John's protest at having not a single musical bone in his body.  
  
It had lit up briefly, made a strangled, flat sound, and stopped.

It really hadn't done a whole lot for John's ego.

* * *

"Rodney," John said, standing in the lab's doorway. "You're going to  _have_  to go down there. That thing doesn't like me at  _all_ , and you're the next strongest gene-carrier. If you want it studied, it has to be you that does it."  
  
"Your logic does not, in any way, resemble Earth-logic, Major," Rodney didn't look up,  _hadn't_  looked up when John had started speaking. "If it wouldn't work for you, then why would it work for me.  It can just remain a mystery, if it's going to be so picky." And what did it say that Rodney hadn't taken a pot-shot at the one time something in Atlantis didn't like him?

It was a very, very bad sign.  
  
"But, Dr. McKay," the little anthropologist said, speaking up for the first time. "We must figure out how it works. It could reveal entire facets of the Ancients' culture. A society's music reveals so much about them. We can't just let it molder.  _Every_  single person with the ATA gene has to attempt to activate it."  
  
"For god's sake, go down and try. May reveal something about Ancients' power sources." Radek said from behind his laptop. "Worst happens it does not work." John thought that Rodney might not see that as the worst-case scenario.  
  
Rodney glared at Radek through his computer screen. "Fine."

* * *

Upon entering the chamber in which the harpsi-organ resided, John had to resist the urge to collapse to the floor convulsing. Rodney's expression clearly spoke of his distress--actually, it was more of a 'I'm in the same room as that, that— _thing_.' It was priceless and heartbreaking all at the same time.  
  
John wanted to fix it, to do something about it.  
  
Making Rodney face his fear was the only thing he knew to do.  
  
Rodney took a step nearer, body as tense as the strings on the harpsi-organ.  
  
At the rate Rodney was going, it was gong to be another ten thousand years before he even  _touched_  it.  
  
"Come on, Rodney," John said, hand closing comfortingly over his shoulder. "I'll go with you."  
  
"You realize this is ridiculous, right?" Another step. " _Everything_  in Atlantis loves you. If it didn't work for you, why would it work for me?"  
  
"Maybe it's just waiting for the right person." Rodney snorted in derision, but moved a step closer. "It could be sitting there, waiting for your clever fingers to move over the keys. To wake it up. To make it sing. It could be yearning for you like you yearn for it--" John was  _not_  waxing rhapsodic while anthropomorphizing a musical instrument.  
  
Really.  
  
Okay, maybe a little.  
  
But, he couldn't help it; he wanted to be the one that Rodney touched.  
  
And that was never going to happen. Especially not when Rodney was looking at John like he was completely 'round the bend. Not knowing what else to do, John just continued his 'you know I'm right so just  _do_  it already' expression.  
  
Rodney took the last three steps on his own.  
  


* * *

In the first breath, the harpsi-organ lit up, a soft golden orange.  
  
In the next breath, it  _sighed_  happily, little breathy-glass sounds that John knew were expressions of bliss.  
  
As Rodney's fingers touched the keys, a chord resounded in the room: a cross between a violin, a glass flute, and a melatron.  
  
It was haunting, despairing, laced with bright sparks of anger, deep lines of passion and loss.  
  
It was so lost it  _hurt_.  
  
It was all that John could do to not die from it in that moment, from that much pain pouring out.  
  
Pain he  _experienced_  as well as heard.  
  
And John suddenly understood so much about Rodney that he didn't know how that could have happened without them having become one being.  
  
He felt like he had been waiting for this moment, been waiting to become, waiting to be something  _more_. And now, he was coming into being through Rodney's music,  _through_  Rodney.  
  
And it was birth and death and weeping gold. It was breathing darkness and transmuting it into green and growing. The ocean becoming blood and thought.  
  
John felt awake for the first time in his life.  
  
Rodney was his focus point, his locus. His praxis. He was everything disparate and complimentary. Together they were violet and yellow, complimentary colors vibrating in dissonance and harmony, intelligence and wisdom, innocence and experience—all those abstractions that were real and illusion and were the same in their opposition.  
  
And John didn't know who was what, what was who.  
  
Then—there was silence, becoming a living being standing in the shadows that felt so much darker now that the music had stopped.  
  
The loss and despair still echoed in John, compounded by the absence of input.  
  
"Rodney—" John whispered, voice breaking, filled with the emotions that had poured out of Rodney.  
  
Rodney's eyes widened.  
  
Then Rodney was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> I've always thought that I would come back to this story, but I haven't yet. There's more to write here. I know that.


End file.
